


purify

by Steamcraft



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Banshee Powers, F/M, Phoenix Jordan Parrish, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 02:13:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2834408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steamcraft/pseuds/Steamcraft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Fire keeps us warm, Peter and me," Lydia says, as if it makes perfect sense. She studies him. "And you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	purify

Peter watches Deputy Jordan Parrish from afar, commercing with the pack, conversing with Lydia. His smiles, his laughter, the flame in his eyes when he looks at her.

Peter wants to snuff it out.

He corners her afterward.

Peter corners her like he's cornered Lydia the rest of the times, keeping her trembling limbs pinned by weight of his stare alone.

It’s all facade: Lydia lets him corner her now. He’s not blind; she’s gotten stronger and less fearful of him. Peter doesn’t know if he prefers it this way, her growing into powers and walking through dead people. Lydia makes it a point, often, to walk through him.

"You found a boyfriend," Peter muses. "All lawful good and tip-top manners that make any mother swoon."

He swoops down to talk in her ear. "I don't know what you're playing at, sweetheart, but I'm not the jealous type."

When Peter leans away, Lydia watches him carefully. He loves her for her brightness, but he hates how insightful she is. Her eyes are calculating, reading his lies.

After a moment she smiles at him, faintly, and walks through him.

-o-

Things Peter doesn't do any longer:

Try to kill Lydia; not with his own hands, at least.

-o-

"You've never been one for sanity," Derek says to Peter as he takes to stand next to him, "but this isn't healthy. Or morally right." Thankfully Scott, Liam, and Malia are all too busy training to eavesdrop on their conversation. Not that Peter cares; he has nothing to hide.

Peter — with arms crossed and stare too intense — doesn't look away from Lydia as she phases through another fireball Jordan unleashes. "I never had too many morals."

"She's the same age as your daughter."

"But she's not my daughter," he responds without missing a beat, watching the way Lydia gives criticism on Jordan’s power. He doesn't like Jordan Parrish because the phoenix smells of thick smoke, fresh ashes, and a volcano erupting.

Peter despises him.

-o-

There's a freak accident. The reports say accident, but the majority of them know better. Hunters had been passing through, and Chris Argent said they wouldn’t cause problems. Peters know the hunters as he knows all hunters: liars.

The Martin house catches fire.

 

Peter is stuck on the sidelines with everyone else, eyes wide and heart beating fast. The firefighters deem the foundation unstable. The fire had burnt too hot too quick, they say, and that’s when Parrish dives right in to save mother and daughter.

It would be best if all three of them burned alive in that fire, Peter tells himself.

Long minutes later, Ms. Martin stumbles out first, followed closely by Lydia and the deputy.

 

-o-

 

“You know what your curse is now,” Peter announces himself quietly when he finds Lydia at the hospital. Stiles is asleep on the chairs beside her, has been with her for two days straight, but he’s not there for Lydia’s health. Stiles has been keeping Lydia company while her mom rests in ICU, stable.

Lydia’s in perfect condition.

“Unblemished,” he says out loud. She stares at him with narrowing eyes. “My bite did nothing, you’re immune to the hallucinogenic effects of wolfsbane unlike your friends, and nothing can touch you unless you will it to.”

“I will die like everyone else does,” she remarks.

“Are you certain?”

Her head tilts as she looks at him, perceiving. After a moment she stands and comes close. Peter doesn’t shy away from her. Lydia asks quietly, “Do you want me to find out?”

He almost flinches at the casual tone, but something must have shown because she smiles softly at him. Lydia raises her hands and holds Peter's face between her them. She says, "I'm the spark that keeps your fire going."

Peter tries to push her away, irritated, but his hand slides right through her. He backs away instead, shaking his head.

She's wrong.

-o-

After the Martin house fire, Lydia and her mother are invited to stay with Deputy Parrish. Jordan is completely respectable, but Lydia climbs into his bed.

Jordan holds her at bay. "I don't understand what you have with Peter Hale, but I don’t approve." His eyes roam over her face, where his hands hold her. “I like you a lot, Lydia.”

"Fire keeps us warm, Peter and me," Lydia says, as if it makes perfect sense. She studies him. "And you." Leaning down slowly, she lets her lips graze his cheek; there isn’t anything happening tonight, Lydia knows, but his lips return the gesture as she departs.

-o-

Jordan doesn't like Peter. He knows enough history to have correct judgment about him, and he deems Peter unsafe to roam free. He’s following him, happen to spot him wandering down main street, and of course Peter leads him down a dark alley.

"Still keeping tabs on me?" Peter asks in a way that doesn't seem like asking. "Afraid I'll pick up your girlfriend?"

The deputy frowns at him. "Lydia can do as she pleases."

A sardonic smile spreads the werewolf’s lips. “She can, yes, yet you wish that she wouldn’t; I heard your heart.”

What a horrible talent, Jordan decides.

Peter’s not a tall man; they’re about the same height, Jordan a little taller, but Peter’s uses the breadth of his shoulders to appear larger. He gets in his personal space, head cocked forward with fangs bared, like an intimidating wolf. His eyes flash blue. It’s the first time Jordan’s ever seen Peter remotely shifted, and something about being threatened — far from Scott and Lydia and everyone else — makes his own eyes change color. Jordan blows steam through his nose slowly.

“Back down,” Jordan warns quietly.

Peter hesitates. Jordan figures he’ll always hesitate when it comes to fire, his only real strength against the psychotic dead man; everything else turns to dust. He watches Peter’s lips raise higher in a snarl, eyes darting about his face and their surroundings, before he finally snorts and turns away. He pauses to say:

“Lydia can do as she pleases. Unfortunately what seems to please her currently is the both of us.” Peter sighs dramatically, “Do not test me with your fire power again, or she’ll be very cross with me.”

-o-

The first day Parrish accidentally burns her during practice, Peter shifts into his beta form, grabs Lydia by the arm and pulls her away from the phoenix. He boxes her against a tree, making inhuman noises. His hands tremble over her frame. The others are staring, but Peter can't back down, so suddenly filled with rage and agony, burning flesh in his nose. He can’t lose anything else to the fire.

A hand falls on his shoulder, and Peter bares his teeth at his nephew and the alpha brat. Scott flashes his eyes red, forces Peter to subdue and Derek pries his hands away from Lydia.

Suddenly, Lydia shouts, “No, it’s okay! I’m okay.” Her hands hold onto Peter’s arms tightly. She looks between Scott, Derek, and Jordan. “Really. Just — give him a minute.”

“Lydia,” Jordan says in a tone that Peter doesn’t like. Like he’s warning her that _Peter_ is a danger.

“Later,” she replies tersely.

_Never_ , Peter thinks.

-o-

It surprises everyone when Lydia walks through Jordan, even Lydia herself.

“That— That wasn’t intentional,” she stammers at him, eyes wide and afraid.

A moment later the banshee’s wail erupts, and Peter laughs with clapped hands. “Finally,” he gleefully says. Everyone glares at him and Stiles makes the comment of shoving him into a hole again.

-o-

The report says Deputy Jordan Parrish was shot in a non-dangering area, like a graze on the arm or something, Jordan doesn’t really care. He knows the truth, and there’s nothing like being shot in the head after pulling over a driver for speeding. The deputy was initially going to let the driver off with a warning (because, really, two-thirty in the morning and driving only ten miles above speed limit? He’d thought the driver was just dying to go home and sleep, or something), but then Jordan woke probably two hours later in Beacon Hill’s morgue with a headache.

He spits out the bullet.

“Sonuvabitch,” he mutters.

“The Sheriff got him,” Lydia announces from behind him. “Your dash cam caught the license plate and the Sheriff went after him. Transporting drugs and firearms.”

Lydia hands him a change of clothes silently and waits until he stands before trying to push a hand through him. Jordan catches her hand and kisses the back of it.

“I’m alive.”

“You weren’t ten minutes ago,” she says quietly, sounding choked. Her eyes won’t meet his. “You weren’t— A bullet to the _brain_ , Jordan.”

Jordan smiles despite himself. “How are our people explaining this to the mortician?”

Lydia’s eyes roll and she wipes away the emotion from her eyelashes. “Money explains a lot of things, something Peter has a lot of, thank God.” She glances at him. “It wasn’t him. Peter didn’t set it up. I told him, after I screamed, that I’d know if he had a hand in it.”

“To be honest, I rather not hear that name when we’re alone together.”

She stares at him for a solid minute, then she picks up the sheet that covered his body from the table and hands it over. “You have blood on your face. Make sure you clean it off before you go into the hall.”

-o-

“What’s this thing you have with Lydia,” Malia asks Peter out of the blue when it’s their turn to walk the perimeter of Beacon Hills territory. “Because it looks kinda sick.”

“What, did you pick the short straw to ask me?” Peter returns.

His daughter grins. “Oh no, I volunteered. Stiles is asking Derek what he knows, and Scott’s asking Deputy Parrish.” She hops onto a giant root and walks down it, coming beside him. “So?”

“And if I said it wasn’t your business? Because it really isn’t.”

“When you’re a homicidal, psychotic dead man returned from the grave, things aren’t your business any longer.” Malia crosses her arms, and God she looks just like her mother with that stance. She raises her eyebrows expectantly, waiting.

Peter turns away, watching the tree lines. “I suppose it kind of does look sick.”

“So you’re fucking her?”

“God no,” Peter chokes dramatically. “Come on, I’m not that terrible. Is that what you band of misfits are thinking? I’ve coerced her into my bed, or something? I know I don’t have a lot of respect with you lot, but surely you don’t think that of miss Lydia Martin, do you?”

“Then… What are you getting from it?” Malia asks, obviously confused. Poor lost, wild child, Peter thinks. “It seems like a lot of emotional constipation going around.”

“Five bucks says you’ve coined that term from Stiles.” When there’s no reply to his distraction, Peter sighs heavily through his nostrils and looks back at her. “The pack of miscreants want to be aware of my intentions with Lydia? They’re honorable, for the most part; I won’t lie, I want her badly. Lydia is magnificent: she’s beautiful and talented and potentially powerful.”

“But what are you getting from it?” Malia asks again after a moment.

Peter sighs again, albeit defeated sound. “Shared attention.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was writing this starting when s4 was hitting the mid-mark, but then I kinda lost feeling with Jordan/Lydia. It will be canonically best considering the direction the writer's have taken with Peter, but Pydia was my go-to pairing after Sterek. Lydia, I feel, is able to love many people with her full heart, so would love Peter and Jordan for different reasons -- which is why she got a little irritated with Jordan at the hospital here.
> 
> Yes, I'm aware this tilts toward Pydia~
> 
> Also, my headcanon is that Phoenix!Jordan can't die unless decapitated. Motherfucker can live through anything.


End file.
